If you are an Afrocentric person of colour, I declare a blessing over you: freedom for you lies in disentangling yourself from the colonizing spirit which you have been taught is god.

Remember who you are.

And now I bless us all. Freedom for us lies in disentangling ourselves from the colonizing, genocidal bully spirit which we have been taught is god.

Remember who you are.

God restores. God frees. God comes with equity. Any person, organization, or system which elevates itself over you is still bound by a colonizing spirit. Rebuke that spirit, receive God’s gift of grace, and claim your freedom.

“Free YOUR mind. The rest will follow.”

This weekend, the government of Canada appropriated Phyllis Webstad’s Orange Shirt Day, calling it Truth and Reconciliation Day, in a country whose federal and provincial policies still feed predatorily on the freedom, energy, and pain of non-Eurocentric people, while trying to gaslight us into celebrating them as saviours instead of as debtors who owe the people whom they oppressed an incalculable sum in reparations. One needs only to glance at federal and provincial statistics to see the glaring truth. That truth is also played out in every day interpersonal relationships between Eurocentric and Afrocentric people, where there is still unconscious incompetence or conscious incompetence in the skill of living with equity.

And so as my Sunday morning on September 29, 2024 began with a circle of seven BIPOC women who gathered to bear witness to the pain “Behind the Smile”, in a space hosted by Moms Against Racism an organization created by Kerry Cavers, a courageous Afrocentric woman, God, whom I now experience in freedom, lead me on a quest which certainly did not begin with me, and which will not end with me.

God, who continues to free me from fearing or seeking the approval of colonizers and their god made in their image and after their ways, inspired me to follow a path of freedom across the ocean by choice, to reclaim the peace and freedom stolen from my ancestors through a journey of forgiveness, to forgive my debtors as God forgives my debts.

Since my Afrocentric ancestors were stolen from their homeland hundreds of years ago, and forced to cross the ocean as cargo, then tortured and treated inhumanely in an attempt to perpetrate genocide through cultural hegemony sanctioned by Eurocentric law, I have no earthly access to the spiritual legacy of my ancestors.

BUT GOD! I use the word but very carefully, as I have come to learn more and more about being impeccable with my word. But erases the power of everything that came before it, and so this time I boldly and intentionally declare: BUT GOD who loves perfectly, and whom I have also forgiven for the atrocities perpetrated against my ancestors, holds the wealth of my ancestors’ inheritance of spiritual connection perfectly in tact in Their hands, and so I trusted Them to guide, provide for, and protect me on this journey.

I love and care for all of humanity as I continue my quest to encourage every person to seek healing for the deep wounds which these atrocities have inflicted on our collective psyche. While I encourage us all to seek healing, I stand to bear witness to the process as an Afrocentric woman. For whom, and as whom, do you engage and bear witness on this quest for truth, restitution, restoration, and reconciliation?